The murders took place in house No. From the ground level in the back of the house, a flight of stairs led up to the main living area. People Magazine Investigates continues with new episodes that air Mondays (10 p.m. Episode Info [28] Near the remains, detectives also discovered a blue nylon jacket, a blanket, a pair of Levi Strauss jeans with a missing back pocket, and an empty medical tape dispenser. The anonymous counselor told him that in May 1981, Martin Smartt had confessed to killing Sue and Tina Sharp. The first member of LE to arrive, shortly after 8 am, was PCSO Deputy Hank Klement, who did a quick search of the cabin, confirming the murders. It is true that longtime cold cases can find warmth even after several decades. Most descriptions of Marty say that he was an unsavory individual with a criminal record and a mean demeanor. Plumas County Sheriff's Office Cabin 28 at Keddie Resort, 1981. Although Justin's dreams, and the details he provided during hypnosis, were chilling, it is unclear whether he actually witnessed the murders or the dreams simply echoed details reported by the media. [21] Carla McMullen, a family acquaintance, later told detectives that Dana Wingate had recently stolen an unknown quantity of LSD from local drug dealers, though she was unable to provide proof of this claim. For 35 years, Sheila Sharp has tried to repress the memory of finding the brutally murdered bodies of her mother and older brother in her familys cabin home in the Sierra Nevada Mountains a crime that remains unsolved. The children were attending school in Quincy and were making friends. Blood patterns indicated that her legs were initially splayed apart, but someone moved her and covered her body with a yellow blanket after the murder. Sheilas sister, 12-year-old Tina Sharp, was nowhere to be found. [25] Both wore gold-framed sunglasses. [30] However, in the 2008 documentary, Sheriff Doug Thomas said he had personally interviewed Martin and that he had passed a polygraph examination. [5] Upon arriving in California, she began renting a small trailer formerly occupied by her brother at the Claremont Trailer Village in Quincy. [24], The house in which the murders occurred was demolished in 2004. Plumas County Sheriffs OfficeComposite sketch of the Keddie murder suspects. I was told the suspects were told to get out of town, so to me, that means it was covered up, Sheila Sharp told CBS Sacramento in 2016. Martys counselor at the Veterans Administration in Reno told police that Marty confessed to killing Sue and Tina but not the two boys. (Whelan). Both Gamberg and Hagwood said they believe authorities are getting closer to solving the case. [24] In his later account of events, told under hypnosis,[17] he claimed to have awoken to sounds coming from the living room while asleep in the bedroom with Rick and Greg. Justin recalled that both men wore glasses and that the two older boys, John and Dana, came home while Sue was talking to the men. Authorities interviewed neighbors and the boys who were inside the house when the attack occurred, but there were no eyewitnesses. "[24] In addition to interviewing the Smartts, detectives interviewed numerous other locals and neighbors; several, including members of the Seabolt family, recalled seeing a green van parked at the Sharps' house around 9:00 pm. When it was eventually discovered that Tina Sharp was missing, the FBI arrived on the scene. The murders took place in cabin 28, during the late evening of April 11, 1981 and/or early morning of the 12th. The entire site has since been abandoned. Like her son, her throat had been cut. On April 22, 1984, Tina Sharp's remains were found in a wooded area of Butte County, which, as reported by California News Times, was approximately 100 miles from Keddie. Gary Mollath, who owned one of the failed resorts, turned his cabins into long-term rental units for low-income families. In a letter, Marty purportedly said: Ive paid the price of your love and now that Ive bought it with four peoples lives, you tell me we are through. Although the cabin Sharp rented from Mollath was run down, it provided her and her family with more room. Between them lies the forgotten tape of the anonymous phone tip left in 1984, rediscovered in 2013. called the Sacramento Department of Justice. Unfortunately, there is no record of this ever happening. Relatives of the victims and the public anxiously await the day when investigators bring justice to the killings of Sue, John, Tina, and Dana. There, they visited their friends and watched TV. KEDDIE (CBS13) Investigators believe they may have found one of the weapons used in a 35-year-old murder mystery. Investigators theorized that someone might have interrupted the murders taking place before the culprits had a chance to kill the younger children in their bedrooms. [24][11] It was never explained why, with access to the Justice Department's and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) top forensic artists, law enforcement chose to use an amateur who sometimes volunteered to help local police. Although the therapist alerted authorities, nothing was reportedly done. Was this why detectives never adequately investigated Boubede? The Keddie Cabin Murders: Inside The Grisly Quadruple Homicide That Still Haunts California. Justin said both men were wearing glasses. It has also been suggested that he was asked leading questions during hypnosis. Sue and John had suffered similar types of wounds. Gamberg and the owner ofKeddie28.com,who goes by the name DMAC, believe that Sue Sharp and Marty Smartt were having an affair. 'People Magazine Investigates' Features Man's 24-Year Wrongful Prison Sentence: 'Never Thought It Could Happen', People Magazine Investigates Offers New Clues on Keddie Cabin Murders, Giving Survivor 'A Little More Hope', 'People Magazine Investigates After Show' : How Solving Keddie Murders Is 'Personal' for Investigators, Inside the Keddie Cabin Murders: Daughter Remembers Finding Mom and Brother Dead at Age 14, A Daughter's 35-Year Fight For Justice: Sheila Sharp Longs to Know Who Murdered Her Family in Their Cabin, Horror in the Woods: 'People Magazine Investigates' Looks at the Keddie Cabin Murders Cold Case, Inside the Search for the Keddie Cabin Killers 35 Years After a Family Was Slaughtered, WATCH: Heartbreak Leads to Hollywood Horror in Exclusive 'People Magazine Investigates' Clip, Behind the Murder of JonBent Ramsey, Featured on 'People Magazine Investigates'. According to Historic Mysteries, John and Sue suffered blunt force trauma to the head and were stabbed multiple times. She remarried and is still alive. The fragments were eventually determined to belong to the missing girl Tina. Marilyn later said in a 2008 documentary that she believed Marty was the perpetrator and that he had even confessed in writing to her. The plastic piece that the police found in Cabin 28 matched up to a Daisy 880 BB gun. The back door left ajar. How could murder with so much evidence remain unsolved? As reported by Keddie28, all three victims were bound with cords, medical tape, and wire. The East Area Rapist used electrical cords to bind victims. Composite sketch of the Keddie murder suspects. Listen Now For our friends in the Deaf and Signing community, you can view an ASL version of this episode HERE. The Butte County Sheriffs Department soon received an anonymous call asking, I was wondering if they thought of the murder up in Keddie up in Plumas County a couple years ago where a 12-year-old girl was never found?. Where is the Body of the Legendary King Gorm of Denmark. He had been manually strangled. A fourth victim, Sheila's younger sister, was missing. 35 Years Later, New Clues May Solve Keddie Murder Mystery. Keddie28 reports she was attending business classes at the Feather River Community College, where she was purportedly a "good student" who worked hard to maintain high grades. Police recieved an anonymous phone call suggesting the bones found at Camp 18 belonged to Tina Sharp. On Saturday, April 11, 1981, Sheila Sharp spent the night with neighbors, as she planned to attend church with them the following morning. [29], In April 2018, Gamberg stated that DNA evidence recovered from a piece of tape at the crime scene matched that of a known living suspect.[19]. Justin reported then that John and Dana entered the home and argued with the men which resulted in a violent fight. Investigators Allude to a Break in the Keddie Cabin Murders The 1981 murder of Sue, Johnny, Tina Sharp and Dana Wingate remains a mystery, but we may be seeing an arrest soon. Unable to discern from where they were coming, they went back to bed. All of their injuries happened after the killers tied them up. Keddie, CA - Unsolved Quadruple Homicide - Keddie Cabin Murders by Every Town. Unsolved murders have a way of weighing on a community, the place forever haunted and the neighbors always left wondering. Working together the result was both fascinating and spooky. Mysteriously, the recording was at the bottom of an unopened evidence box. The three youngsters were hanging out at the house since the afternoon. Since his recruitment in 2013, he has made several new discoveries. To read the full article about the Keddie Cabin Murders please log in or join Stangeoutdoors by clicking here: The shocking unsolved Keddie Cabin murders Exclusive Members Only Area $15.99 One time Exclusive content for Members Keddie28 reported Sharp immediately fled the cabin and ran to the neighbors for help. Watch our new 10-part true crime show, People Magazine Investigates, which airs Mondays (9 p.m. Around a month after the Keddie murders took place, the neighborhood friend, Justin, who was one of the survivors, told his therapist that he was having dreams about the murder. All had been beaten with a claw hammer and knifed. Detectives also discovered that the telephone had been left off the hook, and the lights had been shut off with all the drapes fully closed. In 2016, Gamberg met with a counselor at the Reno Veterans Administration. All victims had suffered blunt-force trauma by hammer or hammers. Keddie Murders Revisited Part 1: New Evidence Discovered Links Living Suspect to Grisly Scene, November 15, 2019.Whelan, Micheal. Sheilas mother had been covered partially with a blanket though that had done little to hide her gruesome injuries. Blood was all over the victims, the floors, walls, ceiling, both bedroom doors, and on the railing of the outside stairs. [24] Shortly after announcing the discovery, the Butte County Sheriff's Office received an anonymous call that identified the remains as belonging to Tina, but the call was not documented in the case. Furthermore, it suggests an answer as to why this case was handled so sloppily, remains unsolved, and is seemingly not a priority to the Sacramento DOJ. Keddie Case Cabin 28. keddie28.com.Little, Jane Braxton. In one of the bedrooms, authorities found Rick, Greg, and their friend Justin Eason Smartt, unharmed. A butcher knife and claw hammer, both also bloodied, were side-by-side on a small wooden table near the entry into the kitchen. . The Keddie victims were bound with tape and electrical cords. [22][23], Sheila and the Seabolt family (with whom Sheila had spent the night in the neighboring home) heard no commotion during the night;[6] a couple living in nearby house #16 was awakened at 1:15 am by what sounded like muffled screaming. Keddie Resort Murder. Although the story is intriguing, Justin may have gotten information about the case from the media during the four weeks since the murders. "I believe there are two individuals that are alive and accessories after the fact,"Detective Mike Gamberg saidin an April 2021 interview with ABC10. She had injuries consistent with a struggle and had an imprint of the butt of an .880 pellet gun on the side of her head. However, when this failed, the Keddie Resort owner Gary Mollath turned a series of cabins into low-income rental housing. Although we have attempted to sort through it with due diligence, even the most credible sources do not agree on all the details. All three returned home later, but Marty and Bo went out again. On the morning of April 11, 1981, 14-year-old Sheila Sharp returned from a neighbors house after a sleepover and stumbled upon the most disturbing and gruesome scene that she and the rest of Keddie, California, had ever seen. Whoever attacked them bound them with medical tape. What the 14-year-old girl discovered inside the modest four-room cabin instantly became one of the most macabre scenes in modern American crime history and has come to be known as the gruesome Keddie murders. Tina was just 12 years old, John was 15, and Dana was 16. Remarkably, the tape of the anonymous tip regarding Tina was found sealed in case files, untouched by Plumas County Sheriffs Dept. Joe Turner is a freelance writer of crime with a passion for unsolved mysteries. He weaves magnificent soap-opera stories from threads of shredded documents and deems these stories the truth. Despite his lies and inconsistencies in his stories, police cleared him as a suspect. The Keddie Cabin Murders took place on April 12, 1981; Sue Sharp, two of her children, and her son's friend lost their lives. Stranger still, in an adjoining bedroom the two youngest Sharp boys, Rickey and Greg, as well as their friend and neighbor, 12-year-old Justin Smartt were found unharmed. However, it was simply too small for the family of six. Is this why detectives seemed to turn a blind eye to many clues and disregarded evidence? They also all sustained multiple stab wounds. Sue urged them not to hitchhike, but passersby spotted John and Dana on a street corner trying to flag a ride home around 9:30-10:00 that evening. Go to PEOPLE.com/PEN, or download the PEN app on Apple TV, Roku Players, Amazon Fire TV, Xumo, Chromecast, iOS and Android devices. The survivor was noticed cowering in the back of an SUV parked in EQ (East Quincy) outside the apartment where the killers were staying. The two had only met weeks before the killings while Boubede was receiving treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder at the nearby Veterans Administration Hospital. The girls shared one, and the younger boys shared the other. Further, it came to light that Marilyn Smartt, Martys wife and mother of Justin, had left her husband on the day of the murder discovery. [29] He later criticized the quality of the initial investigation, saying: "You could take someone just coming out of the academy and they'd have done a better job. Unfortunately, many hours passed since her disappearance, and the chance of anyone finding her nearby was slim. 109 min listen. Therefore, it appears they did not have a chance or chose not to fight back. Sheila had spent that night at a sleepover next door. However, they onlywent on a few dates, and the last time they saw each other was two days before she was killed. Clipping from Reno Gazette-Journal, April 13, 2016.DMAC. Sheila Sharp who discovered the victims of the Keddie Cabin 28 murders in 1981, when she was 14 hopes the cold case finally will be resolved By Jeff Truesdell Published on November 25, 2016. Keddie, California.Sue Sharp, her teenage son John, and his friend Dana Wingate are found brutally murdered in the Sharp family's cabin at Keddie Resort in the Sierra Nevada. About the Cabin 28 Keddie Murders Case: The morning of April 12, 1981, Glenna Sue Sharp and her kids, Tina and John, and John's friend, Dana Wingate, were brutally murdered inside house #28 in Keddie, California. Also note how close the cabin is to its neighbor. Based on Justin's description of the attackers, detectives identified Martin "Marty" Smartt as one of the primary suspects in the cabin murders. When the DOJ was alerted to this confession in 1981, they dismissed it as hearsay.. Gamberg is on a special mission to solve the 37-year-old murder case, where four people were brutally murdered, and probably all within the tiny railroad town and former resort community called Keddie. Historic Mysteries is an Amazon Associate and earns from qualifying purchases. In 2016, Gamberg located a hammer believed to be one of the murder weapons in a dried-up pond in Keddie. Please note that there is a lot of misinformation published online about the Keddie murders. Later, it came to light that Marty was a personal friend of the local county sheriff, Doug Thomas, at the time of the crime. Plumas County Sheriffs DepartmentA back view of cabin 28 where the family had lived for a year. Sue had just divorced her husband and brought her children from Connecticut to Keddie in Northern California. Neighbors said that for the most part, she kept to herself but the family was integrating well. Many people believe that the police were either incompetent or corrupt and covered up the crime for some reason. Gamberg sent the tape to other law enforcement agencies for analysis and possible leads. Keddie had been a bustling resort town since its revival in 1978. Smartt moved to Reno, Nevada, shortly after the conclusion of his police interview and was also never arrested or charged in the Keddie cabin murders. Nevertheless, Gamberg says that six people may have been involved. Keddie Murder Victims (Clockwise): Sue Sharp, John Sharp, Dana Wingate, and Tina Sharp. WANTED: The Keddie Cabin Killer Episode Summary A family's brutal murder rocks a tiny California town and leaves behind too many unanswered questions. It would not have been accidentally misplaced." The victims were bound with electrical wire and medical tape. The killers had escaped. Following his arrest in 1996, police looked at the . [24] John Boubede, who allegedly had ties to organized crime in Chicago,[29] died there in 1988. The murders tooks place in Cabin 28 of the Keddie Resort. The Keddie Murders is an unsolved 1981 American quadruple murder that took place in Keddie, a former resort town in the foothills of California's Sierra Nevada. Some have speculated that Martin may have killed Sue for revenge, in the mistaken belief that she was responsible for breaking up his marriage. The sheriff at the time of the murders, Doug Thomas, and his deputy. In September 1980, Sharp found a larger home in the former resort town of Keddie, California. 2009-2021 Historic Mysteries. In 2016, a man sweeping around with a metal detector found a hammer in a dried-up pond near Keddies entrance. (Metcalf: 2018). As she opened the door, she discovered three bodies on the living room floor of the infamous Cabin 28. Unfortunately, they later went into foster care as their aunt already had several children and couldnt handle more. [29], On March 24, 2016, a hammer matching the description of the hammer Martin claimed to have lost was discovered in a local pond[19] and taken into evidence by Plumas County Special Investigator Mike Gamberg. Nonetheless, it raises many questions. In press releases accompanying the sketches, the suspects were described as being in their late 20s to early 30s; one stood between 5feet 11inches (1.80m) to 6feet 2inches (1.88m) tall with dark-blonde hair, and the other between 5feet 6inches (1.68m) and 5feet 10inches (1.78m) with black, greased hair. However, the perpetrators did not leave behind any of their own blood. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. There, she resided with her 15-year-old son, John (born November 16, 1965);[3] 14-year-old daughter Sheila; 12-year-old daughter Tina (born July 22, 1968);[7] and two younger sons, Rick (age 10) and Greg (age 5). Thats the way my mom raised us, she says. The mystery surrounding the unsolved Keddie Cabin Murders. [10], Justin gave conflicting stories of the evening, including that he had dreamed details of the murders, though he later claimed to have actually witnessed them. Eliminated as a suspect, despite actually confessing to the Keddie murders, was Robert Joseph Silveria Jr., the so-called "Boxcar Killer". Some sources claim that Boubede had a crush on Sue, who supposedly rejected him twice. On . But the memory of those murders has also stayed with the community and especially with the investigators who have re-opened the case of the 1981 attacks on Sue Sharp, her son Johnny, her daughter Tina, and family friend Dana Wingate. His throat had been slit. There were some bloodstains on her bedding, which suggested that she might have been kidnapped from her bed after the murders. Since then, no arrests have been made, and the names have never been released to the public. Although authorities believe they were both involved in the Keddie cabin murders, they think they may have had help. She also worked a part-time job at the Quincy Elks Lodge, and with the little money she brought in, Sue rented Keddie Cabin 28 in the fall of 1981.